Quote from: anibioman on April 07, 2012, 11:19:58 PM
btw the OP is wrong about brain scans showing this. that particular part of your brain cant be imaged and they have to dissect you after you die to see it.

emil posted a pretty good comment a few pages back about research they are doing through brain scans with regards to brain "gender"

Quote from: emil on April 04, 2012, 10:44:28 PM
I'm referring to the exposure of a testosterone level higher than average, throughout a longer period of time, also during critical developmental periods, not just in the womb. It has been found that FTMs tend to have higher testosterone levels:
http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/4/1011.short
Hormones CAN in fact reshape the brain, throughout our lives, there has been research on that as well.

And there HAS been research showing "gendered" brain structures on scans, not just post mortem via brain slicing, so your information isn't up to date in that respect:
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2011/01/26/scans-show-difference-in-transgender-brains/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022395610001585

Also, the  brain-slicing findings only ever referred to MTFs:
http://faculty.bennington.edu/~sherman/sex/TRANSGENDER.pdf

Once you've read through this you will find out that transgendered person's brain might very well appear more "in between" than just simply "male" or "female" (ignoring for a moment that "male" and "female" as binary categories aren't well established at all when it comes to brains).

Quote from: Andy8715 on April 07, 2012, 10:21:49 PM
Do you feel that it's inconsistent when a cis woman like things that are (stereo)typically masculine or when a cis man likes things that are (stereo)typically feminine?

Again, no  , because they didn't pick male or female. How they are born says nothing about their identity except in an aggregate statistical sense. Technically a trans man is counted as a "cis woman" until they come out and transition.

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Well they are different.  AFAB people have XX chromosomes while AMAB people have XY chromosomes.  You are confusing genetics/biology (what our make up is) with personality (who we are and what we like)

Well I'm not confusing them, they are related! Masculine and feminine personalities exist and are linked with male and female physiology for a reason, is what I meant. Like, men are on average bigger and stronger with faster reflexes and better focus. They also are more likely to have competitive, dominant personalities. The two go hand in hand because the male role we evolved with is as a provider and protector. Interests stem from the biology of it. It's why men like sports and violent video games more often than women, for example.

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When I made the decision to transition it had nothing to do with what I liked to do (I like a mixture of feminine and masculine things) but all to do with the fact that I didn't see myself as a woman at all.  No one ever said, "you shouldn't do this/should do this because you are a girl", I just knew my body was wrong.  Is that how you felt or did you simply transition to not have to deal with the stigma of being a "guy" who likes girly things?  I'm not judging at all, I'm just genuinely curious, because that is almost what it sounds like you are saying.

In a sense that is what I mean. In general though, I mean I saw that I am like a female in most of the ways where I am either masculine or feminine. Transition is just natural and makes sense for me. It makes it possible to be myself and be appreciated better for who I actually am. I don't look at myself and think, without any external factors, "I NEED to be a (man/woman)." I don't understand that kind of thinking when there's no real external motivation. I don't think it's normal for people to be that attached to their sex either. Really, if you ask people, a lot of them will start rattling off disadvantages to being their sex, even if they would never want to transition. Anyway, it's just what they are and their personality usually follows that to some degree  . When it's staunchly opposed to that, like for me, I think that is when transition makes sense and is a real quality of life issue even without "gender dysphoria". You just get tired of people forcing your square peg in a round hole that you don't even care for to begin with. Plus, yea, male hormones clash with my style.

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It's pretty easy to look in from the outside and say "wow your life as a man is perfect you have a wife/kids/business/friends/etc, why would you ever want to transition and be a woman?!" when you don't know the internal struggles they may have in the past or present be facing.

True, I guess it is just hard to wrap my brain around since I just simply could never (or would have wanted to even try to) have that kind of excessively male life  but I guess it varies.

I guess some people shape the world around them, and some allow the world around them to shape them. It's definitely food for thought.

Quote from: pretty on April 08, 2012, 02:53:59 AM
I don't think it's normal for people to be that attached to their sex either.

I don't think most people actually are, unless their sex illicits feelings which are at odds to what the person is expecting. Then it becomes noticable. Sitting down and crossing one's legs on reflex only to find there's something in the way, which leads to an eye-watering, and disheartening realisation that it's not something you can do naturally with the equipment you currently have, for example. Or, on the flip side, being half asleep, wandering into the bathroom, and realising as you're clearing up the mess sometime later than you don't have what you should have in order to do things the way which feels natural to you.

When everything's where it should be, and doing what it should be doing, people tend not to notice and take it for granted. Only when it isn't, that's when a lot of folks become aware of it. At least that's my view. You don't pay much attention to your upper left molar until it starts aching and causing you discomfort. Then it's all you can think about. Whether that discomfort is physical, or mental, the result is the same.

Quote from: pretty on April 06, 2012, 03:04:41 PM
I don't really get your point 

My point is that while there certainly does seem to be strong evidence (see emil's post that has been posted in quotes several times) that there are structural differences between the brains of those MAAB and FAAB and there's no question that different sex hormones have different effects on people's bodies and brains, there really is not enough evidence to claim there is a direct link between these things and specific behavioral patterns.  You are making claims like men on average like sports more (or whatever) and that comes about due to biology.  You can't actually back up that claim up.     And pointing out a higher number of  "masculine" trans women than cis women (and vice versa) based on your anecdotal observations is absolutely insufficient as evidence.

IMO, there's probably a constellation of contributing factors to how we become who we are.  Doubt we need to hit every possible note to get here, and different combinations will probably tip the scales, or not, just the same.  Some of them might (probably) be neurological.  Some of the neurological factors might not even be sexually dimorphic, but aspects of the personality that leave the door open to it.  Innately elevated of cross gender hormones? sure, even if all they do is set you apart from your peers, or give you a glimpse into what it might be like if things were different.  I don't think "nurture" alone has much to do with it, but some events or trends might have some impact.

Ultimately, if the gatekeepers are still gatekeeping and they come out with some definitive anatomical test, they would have no legitimacy in my mind if they didn't run those tests on trans folks who had already transitioned before the tests were introduced, to compare statistically if the people who had already crossed over and were happy ALL were found to test positive.  If they're content but test negative, there really isn't a problem, and I'd hope the gatekeepers would understand that they clearly aren't testing for everything.

Every single person that lives on this planet has experiences their gender differently than every other person.  Same goes for most things we experience.  There are plenty of things we have in common, and some things are more common than others, but no one can tell us who we are based on those things.  They can only guess.